"You know the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick." -Gov. Sarah Palin-
"The media are not above the daily test of any free institution." -Barry M. Goldwater-
"America's first interest must be to punish our enemies, then, if possible, please our friends." -Zell Miller-
"One single object...[will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation." -President Thomas Jefferson-
"Don't get stuck on stupid!" -Lt. Gen. Russel Honore-
"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." -Isaiah 5:20-
On April 29th, 2010, Barack Obama made the following statement:
| I do think at a certain point you've made enough money. |
| Mr. President, why don't you ask your friends to set the example on how much is too much? |
Just when I thought that the Democrats couldn't do or say anything more stupid or hypocritical than what they've already done or said, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer had to open their mouths and go and prove me wrong.
First, let's go back a few years and remember what other Dems have said about voicing opposition to Washington D.C. In 2003, Hillary Clinton (D-NY) proclaimed the following:
| Dissent is patriotic! |
| These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades. |
How did Brian Deese become such an influential voice in the Obama administration and how did he get put in charge of dismantling General Motors?
Let's look at his resume. According to Glenn Beck at Fox News:
| Deese grew up in a Boston suburb, the son of a political science professor at Boston College. He moved to Vermont and attended Middlebury College, where he studied political science and also took time to host a campus radio show called "Bedknobs and Beatniks," described in one write-up as "a format of music, news, discussion and banter." He graduated college in 2000 and then it was onto a pair of non-profit think tanks: the Center for Global Development and the Center for American Progress. Eventually Deese went to Yale for a law degree, but a few credits short of graduating, he went "on leave" to work on Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, quickly becoming her top economic policy staffer. |
| Last summer, Deese moved to the Obama campaign as a deputy economic policy director and, just before this current gig, he served on Obama's transition team as an economic adviser. |
Just a week or so ago, Barack Obama pledged to begin a unilateral scrapping of our nuclear weapons. Since then, North Korea has been taking some very provocative steps. Again, I have to wonder if North Korea's actions were calculated based based on Obama's stance and words.
Now, the situation has become worse. North Korea announced that it was pulling out of the treaty that ended the Korean War more than 50 years ago. This has lead to heightened tensions in the region and U.S. and South Korean troops have gone on high alert.
Apparently, North Korea sees our efforts at controlling nuclear proliferation and preventing terrorists from getting their hands on a nuclear weapon as an "act of war."
From BBC News:
| Pyongyang has blamed its decision on South Korea's decision to join a US-led initiative to search ships for nuclear weapons, calling it a "declaration of war". "Any hostile act against our peaceful vessels, including search and seizure, will be considered an unpardonable infringement on our sovereignty," said a spokesman for the North's army. "We will immediately respond with a powerful military strike." |
| US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the North's violation of Security Council resolutions, but also held out hope that North Korea would return to six-nation disarmament talks. |
I remember the libs stamping their feet and screaming that the election of Barack Obama would make the world a safer, better place. Well, someone forgot to tell that to the Taliban in Pakistan.
The Taliban is threatening to topple the Pakistani government. From the Daily Mail:
| Extremists are now just 60 miles from the capital Islamabad, sparking fears that they are are poised to wrest control of the country, which has nuclear capability. This morning a Taliban spokesman said that fighters would withdraw from Buner later today. 'Our leader has ordered that Taliban should immediately be called back from Buner,' spokesman Muslim Khan said. Khan belongs to a faction led by Taliban commander Fazlullah, whose stronghold is in the neighbouring Swat valley where the government has caved in to demands for the imposition of Islamic law. The announcement came hours after the capital Islamabad came under threat from Taliban fighters. It is feared that the state is one the brink of collapse as Taliban fighters get closer to the nuclear powers of the country. As violence broke out in the north-west corner of the country, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Pakistan posed a 'mortal threat' to the world. 'I think the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists,' she added. And White House spokesman Robert Gibbs echoed her concerns. He said last night: 'The news over the past several days is very disturbing.' |
So much for Doctor-Patient privilege. The mis-nomered Stimulus Package to be signed into law to day by President Barack Obama (making him the first president in history to triple the deficit in a single day), contains provisions that not only will allow government to intercede in medical decisions made by your doctor, but also will make your digital medical records availabel for sale, whether you give your consent or not.
Fred Lucas at CNS News has this:
| Though the legislation says there is a “prohibition on sale of electronic health records or protected health information,” there are five pages of exceptions to the prohibition that include research, treatment of an individual, or a decision by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to wave the prohibition. (See Legislation, PDF pages 391-395.) One exception listed in the legislation is if, “The purpose of the exchange is for public health activities.” Another exception is apparently to ensure the data – if sold – are not for commercial reasons, saying, “The purpose of the exchange is for research and the price charged reflects costs of preparation and transmittal of the data for such purpose.” Another exception is rather broad saying, “The purpose of the exchange is otherwise determined by the secretary in regulations to be similarly necessary and appropriate” in accordance with the other exceptions. Further, one of the exceptions seemingly states the government can obtain an individual’s health information for the purpose of protecting an individual’s privacy. It reads: “The purpose of the exchange is for treatment of the individual, subject to any regulation that the secretary may promulgate to prevent protected health information from inappropriate access, use or disclosure.” |
| But the exceptions on exchanging or selling information could be more problematic to privacy if health records are digital, said Sue Blevins, president of the Institute for Health Freedom, a group that advocates health privacy issues. “Digital records without consent is a recipe for invasion of privacy,” Blevins told CNSNews.com Monday. “Consent was gutted with HIPAA, but it is really hard to get out paper records. When they are made electronic, you can share data with a click of a mouse.” Those who could be able to sell the information would be health care providers, insurance companies and other entities that collect the data. |
So, now that Joe Wurzelbacher has forced Barack Obama into admitting that he is a socialist, what does the media do? They attack Joe. But that is not the crux of this post.
Charles Krauthammer has penned a column that pretty much pegs Old Media and the Dems in general for their hypocritical stances on stories relating to the campaign.
From his column at Town Hall:
| Let me get this straight. A couple of agitated yahoos in a rally of thousands yell something offensive and incendiary, and John McCain and Sarah Palin are not just guilty by association -- with total strangers, mind you -- but worse: guilty according to The New York Times of "race-baiting and xenophobia." But should you bring up Barack Obama's real associations -- 20 years with Jeremiah Wright, working on two foundations and distributing money with William Ayers, citing the raving Michael Pfleger as one who helps him keep his moral compass (Chicago Sun-Times, April 2004) and the long-standing relationship with the left-wing vote-fraud specialist ACORN -- you have crossed the line into illegitimate guilt by association. |
| Remember McCain's Berlin/celebrity ad that showed a shot of Paris Hilton? An appalling attempt to exploit white hostility at the idea of black men "becoming sexually involved with white women," fulminated New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. He took to TV to denounce McCain's exhumation of that most vile prejudice, pointing out McCain's gratuitous insertion in the ad of "two phallic symbols," the Washington Monument and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Except that Herbert was entirely delusional. There was no Washington Monument. There was no Leaning Tower. Just photographs seen in every newspaper in the world of Barack Obama's Berlin rally in the setting he himself had chosen, Berlin's Victory Column. |
| On Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and Jonathan Alter of Newsweek fell over themselves agreeing that the "political salience" of the Republican attack on ACORN is, yes, its unstated appeal to racial prejudice. This about an organization that is being accused of voter registration fraud in about a dozen states. In Nevada, the investigating secretary of state is a Democrat. Is he playing the race card too? |
| Just weeks ago, in Springfield, Mo., and elsewhere, he warned darkly that George Bush and John McCain were going to try to frighten you by saying that, among other scary things, Obama has "a funny name" and "doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills." McCain has never said that, nor anything like that. When asked at the time to produce one instance of McCain deploying race, the Obama campaign could not. Yet here was Obama firing a pre-emptive charge of racism against a man who had not indulged in it. An extraordinary rhetorical feat, and a dishonorable one. What makes this all the more dismaying is that it comes from Barack Obama, who has consistently presented himself as a healer, a man of a new generation above and beyond race, the man who would turn the page on the guilt-tripping grievance politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. |
Just about a month ago, the libs were smugly saying to one another, "It must be tough to be a Republican these days what with Barack Obama rising up." Well, those same libs have learned a hard lesson of life: the higher you go up, the further you have to fall. In the space of less than a week, after John McCain sprang a trap that I am certain he planned a long time ago, that fall is upon them.
And it is not just in the politcal arena. The leftist media has seen its numerous vicious attacks against Sarah Palin and her family backfire and blow-up in their faces. One of the most profound examples is how tens of thousands of subscribers have cancelled their subscriptions to Us magazine after they ran a scandalously misleading cover about Gov. Palin (and the magazine's owner got exposed and raked over the coals on FoxNews), as compared to the very favorable cover they ran for Barack Obama.
The American people are seeing it now. They are seeing the sexist hypocrisy of the left. They are seeing the sexist hypocrisy of the Democrat Party. They are seeing the sexist hypocrisy of Old Media. And it all spells bad news for Obama.
Thus, Barack Obama is now being forced to do something in response. He is sending out female surrogates to hawk for him. From the New York Times via MSNBC:
| Senator Barack Obama will increasingly lean on prominent Democratic women to undercut Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator John McCain , dispatching Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to Florida on Monday and creating a rapid-response team to deploy female surrogates to battleground states, Obama advisers said on Thursday. |
| With the McCain-Palin team courting undecided female voters, including some who backed Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Obama aides say they are counting on not only Mrs. Clinton but also Democratic female governors to criticize their Alaskan counterpart, Ms. Palin — and, by extension, Mr. McCain — including Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas. |
| Advisers to Mrs. Clinton, who has been on vacation this week, said that she stands ready to help the Obama-Biden ticket, but they urged not to overestimate the effect she could have, noting that she had other commitments this fall, like campaigning and raising money for Senate candidates. |
| The turning point was the designation of Palin and the personal attacks on her. By stirring up a storm, Democrats assured that Palin would speak to 37 million Americans - just a million fewer than watched Obama's acceptance speech. Anecdotal evidence already suggests that women may have a gut reaction to the establishment's sexist assault on a woman candidate - and flock to McCain. They've seen him stake everything on this one big move of turning toward a woman - in direct contrast to Obama's deliberate decision not to name a woman. They've seen the media and Democrats gang up on her and do their worst. And they've seen Palin stand up and stuff the challenge right back down the establishment's throat. All this may have created an entirely new dynamic in the race. |
You know, the main reason I am a McCain supporter is that I look at all issues and weigh the entire situation accordingly. It is something akin to a teacher grading students on their work over an entire semester. The teacher cannot simply give an overall grade based on a few of the assignments. All assignments and work must be taken into consideration.
That is how I look at the Presidential candidates. I look at everything they stand for and decide which one more closely represents my viewpoint. If I had to give them grades, Obama and Clinton would each get an "F" while, at least until yesterday, "B-" is the grade that John McCain would have recieved.
I cannot give Obama and Clinton any lower marks since "F" is the lowest grade on the scale. They still remain failures. But Senator McCain's grade took a major nose-dive recently. He currently stands at "C-" with me.
From E. Ralph Hostetter at NewsMax.com:
| The U.S. Senate voted on Tuesday, May 13, to block oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the offshore areas of the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. It is indeed remarkable how quickly the U.S. Senate can organize a negative vote when the issue is of such magnitude and importance to the economy and welfare of the nation. To reverse the damage this vote has done to America’s energy independence will take months of endless hearings, making certain that every dissident is heard. The National Center for Policy Analysis also on Tuesday, identified the U.S. Congress as the responsible party for the high price of gasoline and summed it up in this manner: “Over the last 28 years, Democrats in Congress and a few Republicans have again and again opposed our drilling for oil in Alaska’s ANWR; during the past 31 years Congress has repeatedly prevented us from building any new oil refineries; most recently congressional Democrats defeated and discouraged any bill that would let us drill in the deep sea, 100 miles out.” |
| Apparently all the presidential candidates have expressed their opposition to development of ANWR. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., announced on May 13 that he had missed the vote in the U.S. Senate, but had he been there, he would have voted against further exploration in ANWR. It would appear as though the majority of present day politicians have no concept of the energy source of 90 percent of America's transport vehicles. |
Even Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos get it! The reporters for the leftist-leaning ABC News finally grew some cojones and asked some hard questions in interviews with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The issue? Taxes.
From Donald Lambro at TownHall.com:
| "Why raise taxes at all in an economic slowdown? Isn't that going to put a further strain on people?" CNBC economic reporter Maria Bartiromo asked Obama a few weeks ago. It's a question that could define the rest of the presidential election and boost GOP prospects at a time when the No. 1 issue is the economy, dwarfing the war in Iraq. Picking up on Bartiromo's pointed question, ABC News anchors Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos also pummeled both candidates last week for their tax policies. "If the economy is as weak a year from now, as it is today, will you ... persist in your plans to roll back President Bush's tax cuts for wealthier Americans?" Stephanopoulos asked Clinton. Clinton said, yes, she would raise the top 35 percent marginal tax rate on incomes over $250,000 "to the rates they were paying in the 1990s" under President Clinton, which would lift them to a confiscatory 40 percent. "Even if the economy is weak?" an incredulous Stephanopoulos asked. "Yes," she replied without hesitation. "I do not believe it will detrimentally affect the economy by doing that." |
| But business advocates and economists dispute that claim, saying it isn't just wealthier Americans who pay the top income tax rate, but also 25.8 million small businesses, many of them family-run operations, that create about 75 percent of the jobs, according to the Small Business Administration. ... Sadly, the Democrats' agenda doesn't include small businesses that earn more than $250,000 but do not consider themselves rich. Many, in fact, are struggling just to keep their heads above water. ... I queried a number of top economists around the country about [Barck Obama's] tax plan, and here's what Glenn Hubbard, the former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and now the dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, had to say about it: "Raising capital (gains) taxes is bad at any time -- and particularly in a weak economy. The only argument for such a tax increase -- since that argument can be neither economic efficiency nor efficient revenue collection -- would be a policy of (income) redistribution." And that, of course, is what Obama has in mind. He would pay for his middle-class tax cuts in part by taxing the 100-million-member investor class, 50 percent of whom are the middle class. It is income redistribution by the government, pure and simple. "They claim they do not want to raise taxes on anyone up to $250,000, but more and more ordinary Americans own stocks through mutual funds, IRAs and 401(k) plans at work. A higher capital-gains tax on stock reduces the value of the stock," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. |
| While Obama promises in one breath that he would not tax anyone below $250,000, with the next breath he says he would raise the $97,000 cap on the Social Security payroll tax to extract money from "millionaires and billionaires" who don't have to pay beyond that rate. "But that's a tax ... on people under $250,000," Gibson reminded the Harvard graduate. "There's a heck of a lot of people between $97,000 and $250,000." Obama, obviously, hadn't thought of that. |
| If that's not contradictory enough, former Clinton White House adviser Gene Sperling, Hillary Clinton's chief economic adviser, said that if the United States were still in a recession next year, she would stick to her tax-hike plan, while proposing a temporary economic stimulus. "Her view would be to add another stimulus through more progressive temporary tax cuts that would have a higher bang for the buck, but she will still revert back to the old top tax rate," he told me. |
How much did the Clintons pull in last year? And the year before that? And the year before that? Alot. They finally released some of their financial records.
Now, no one should take them to task for making so much money ($109 million over the last 8 years) but there are some questions about conflict-of-interest and some some sheer hypocrisy concerning their personal finances.
The Wall Street Journal has a very good editorial about this. Some excerpts:
| We can also now understand why the couple took so long to release their returns, and are still reluctant to release other information. Their political status has given them access to wealthy folks who've helped make them rich. For example, Mr. Clinton raked in as much as $15 million working as an adviser and rainmaker for billionaire financier Ron Burkle's Yucaipa firm. We're not sure what advice Mr. Clinton gave but it must have been fabulous. The former President also took in $3.3 million in consulting fees from InfoUSA CEO Vinod Gupta, who has also helped fund Mrs. Clinton's White House bid. These are not opportunities that fall into every American's lap. Meanwhile, the Clintons also made liberal use of the charitable deduction, claiming $10.2 million in charitable giving over the eight years. Intriguingly, nearly all the donations went to the Clinton Family Foundation, which has disbursed only half the money. The Clintons can thus use the foundation for, er, strategic giving, such as the $100,000 it donated last year to a local South Carolina library – the day after Mrs. Clinton debated in that key primary state. There are other examples of such politically targeted philanthropy, and it's worth noting that most of the foundation's disbursements came only after Mrs. Clinton announced her Presidential run. Similar conflict-of-interest questions apply to the separate William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, for which the couple has so far refused to release a list of donors. |
| Like other Americans during this tax season, the Clintons have also had to endure the complexity of the tax code. Their 2006 return alone totaled 67 pages. While they can afford a smart accountant to sift through all those forms, would it be too optimistic to think Mrs. Clinton might be inspired by her tax experience to promote tax reform? Alas, yes. Senator Clinton's main tax proposal is to repeal the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, raising rates to the levels of the Clinton Presidency. "We didn't ask for George Bush's tax cuts. We didn't want them, and we didn't need them," Mrs. Clinton explained. With friends like Mr. Burkle, clearly they didn't. But her higher tax rates wouldn't merely hit those who make $109 million; they'd soak middle-class families that make $100,000 or $200,000 a year and hardly feel "rich." If the former first lady feels so strongly that she should pay more taxes, we suggest she lay off the middle class and instead write a personal check to the U.S. Treasury for the difference between the Clinton and Bush tax rates. She and her husband can afford it. |
The Dem campaign strategy seems to be "Always lie first, then obfuscate the truth later." Due to the complicity Old Media voluntarily gives the DNC, it is an easy thing for them to do. But only the most naive and ignorant will actually follow them on it.
Their latest attempt at spinning an untruth has to do with a comment that John McCain made about Iraq. Now, before we get to what the Dems are spinning on this, let's look at McCain's full quote. From Kathryn Jean Lopez writing for TownHall.com:
| What the "100 years" talk refers to is something McCain rightly said in response to a question during a New Hampshire town hall meeting in January. The question regarded Bush's statement that we could be in Iraq for 50 more years. McCain sensibly responded: "Make it 100. We've been in South Korea ... we've been in Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me. As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that's fine with me. I hope that would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al Qaeda is training, recruiting and equipping and motivating people every single day." |
| "Instead of offering an exit strategy for Iraq, (Sen. John McCain is) offering us a 100-year occupation," Sen. Barack Obama said on the fifth anniversary of the coalition's move on the then-oppressed Iraq. But it could have been any day; Obama uses the sound bite often enough. In late March, Sen. Hillary Clinton refused to be charmed by McCain's call to close Guantanamo Bay and droned on as she does: "While there is much to praise in Sen. McCain's speech, he and I continue to have a fundamental disagreement on Iraq. Like President Bush, Sen. McCain continues to oppose a swift and responsible withdrawal from Iraq. Like President Bush, Sen. McCain discounts the warnings of our senior military leadership of the consequences of the Iraq war on the readiness of our armed forces, and on the need to focus on the forgotten front line in Afghanistan. Like President Bush, Sen. McCain wants to keep us tied to another country's civil war, and said 'it would be fine' with him if U.S. troops were in Iraq for 50 or even 100 years. That, in a nutshell, is the Bush/McCain Iraq policy." |
Bill O'Reilly has labeled it the "Pastor Disaster." Yes, I am talking about Jeremiah Wright. I know, Old Media tried to bury the story by inserting a small gaff John McCain made in Iraq, but that turned out to be small potatoes compared to this. Even Hillary Clinton is turning the spotlight back to this story.
But I am revisiting it for a different reason. While growing up, many in the establishment tried to make me feel guilty for being a white man. Well, I'm not. Apparently, Barack Obama is banking on people like me have this "white guilt." He's going to lose on that bet. I have no white guilt to give. And here is why: racism coming from blacks is just as bad as racism coming from whites.
Doug Patton gives a good example of how Obama is simply a black racist. From his most recent column:
| Barack Obama would not have stayed in this Afrocentric, separatist church run by a paranoid, bigoted leader if he did not subscribe to the rhetoric that was being preached. His insistence on defending Jeremiah Wright tells us a great deal about what Obama himself believes. |
| He believes the government is a tool for redistributing wealth from those who earn it to those who don't. He thinks government, which rarely does anything efficiently, could and should dispense health care to 300 million people. He believes our borders should remain wide open and would do nothing to close them. He believes that abortionists should have the right to kill a newborn child who somehow miraculously survives an abortion. He wants to wave the white flag in Iraq, the central front in the war against radical jihadism, thereby surrendering to forces which will be further emboldened by our timidity, just as they were after Bill Clinton's misadventures in Somalia. ... He wants to raise taxes to levels this nation has never seen. His reckless collectivist economic policies would destroy small businesses, make everything more expensive and empower government to have more control over our lives than at any time in our history. |
| What is wrong with Barack's prognosis and Barack's cure? Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, "everybody but the rioters themselves." Was "white racism" really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said -- that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery. |
| Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America. Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to. This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these: First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American. Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream. Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks -- with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants. Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks. We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude? Barack talks about new "ladders of opportunity" for blacks. Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for "deserving" white kids. Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America's fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent? Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself? |
We all know what pork-barrel spending is. It is also known by the term "earmarks" and figured very prominently in that pork-laden transportation bill which, among other things, included money to build a bridge to nowhere in Alaska. It got quite a bit of attention as I recall.
But now, most of that attention is negative. Taxpayers are fed-up about paying for earmarks and Congressional spending sprees. House Minority Leader John Boehner tells us why in his most recent column:
| House Republicans have taken a stand against wasteful Washington spending by calling for a complete freeze on all "earmarks" and pork-barrel projects. While our challenge has largely fallen on deaf ears — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, could shut down the earmark process tomorrow if she wanted to — our cause has a strong ally in Sen. John McCain. Mr. McCain has been a leader in the quest to end pork-barrel spending and has led by example — the senator, like myself, doesn't request earmarks. He strongly supported a one-year moratorium on all earmarks in the U.S. Senate. And as president, Mr. McCain has promised that any "earmarked, pork-barrel bill that comes across my desk, I'll veto it." |
| Mr. McCain's opposition to wasteful spending is a breath of fresh air to taxpayers who foot the bill for congressional spending sprees. Americans aren't interested in paying for teapot museums, peanut storage and "monuments to me," where congressmen name buildings and other projects after themselves. And with families feeling the pinch of high gas prices and skyrocketing health care costs, they're certainly not interested in tax increases. |
| Not surprisingly, Mr. McCain's Democratic opponents have quite a different record on spending. In 2007 alone, Sen. Hillary Clinton, New York Democrat, earmarked $340 million in taxpayer dollars. Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat, earmarked more than $91 million. As recently as last week, both campaigns refused to disclose their full list of earmark requests. The pressure finally got to Mr. Obama, who released his 2005-06 earmark requests on March 13. His requests include $1 million for a hospital where his wife served as vice president of community and external affairs. While Mrs. Clinton continues to decline demands that she make her requests public, one nonpartisan watchdog group says the senator landed 360 earmarks from 2002 to 2006. In 2007, Mrs. Clinton admitted to seeking funding for a hippie museum in Bethel, N.Y. Her spokesman has stated flatly that Mrs. Clinton is "very proud" of her earmarks, which cost taxpayers more than $2.2 billion. |
| Last week, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama both voted for the Democrats' $3 trillion budget that included the largest tax increase in American history. According to the Associated Press, the budget would raise income taxes "on individuals making as little as $31,850 and couples earning $63,700" to pay for more wasteful spending. |
"It's the economy, stupid!" Isn't that what the libs keep yelling at us when we Conservatives try to point out that we are winning in Iraq? Well, let's look at each candidate's position on taxes, updated because several candidates have dropped out since the last time I posted a comparison like this.
Go to the following website:
Presidential Candidate Tax Plan Comparison
TaxFoundation.org
Put a check in the boxes next to the names you want to compare. Then hit the Compare button.
You'll notice quite the difference between John McCain and his two uber-liberal potential opponents.
So, this is what we get for bringing in a Democrat controlled Congress back in 2006. The Dems are trying to destroy the economic progress that we, as a nation, have made since the 2001 tax cuts went into effect. If they think we are in a recession now, the tax increases the Dems want to enact would send us spiraling into a full blown depression.
But another interesting aspect of the bill was an amendment that would put a moratorium on earmark spending. All three current Presidential candidates voted for it, but a vast majority of Senators (including the two from here in Virginia) voted against it:
| John McCain, the GOP nominee-to-be, couldn't attract even a majority of Senate Republicans to vote with him Thursday night behind the earmark moratorium touted by party conservatives as a way to restore the GOP's credibility with voters. |
| The underlying House and Senate Democratic federal budget plans for 2009, though nonbinding, drew blasts from Republicans for allowing some or all of Bush's tax cuts to die in about three years. ... The Senate passed a companion plan by a 51-44 vote. It endorsed extending $340 billion of Bush's tax cuts but balked at continuing all of them. ... "This may be the last bastion in America where they don't get it," he told reporters after Thursday night's vote. "Americans are sick and tired of the way we do business in Washington. As president, I promise the American people ... the first earmarked, pork-barrel bill that comes across my desk, I'll veto it." |
| However, on taxes, the Arizona Republican voted to extend the full roster of Bush's tax cuts, which he opposed seven years ago as being tilted in favor of the wealthy. |
| Democratic rivals Clinton of New York and Obama of Illinois both voted to extend only some of Bush's tax cuts while allowing cuts in income tax rates and investments expire. They joined other Democrats in a 52-47 vote against extending $376 billion of them. |
The interesting, albeit irrelevant, argument going on between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is all about experience and readiness to take over as Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces. The truth is that neither one has anywhere near the experience and readiness of Senator John McCain.
As such, John McCain is taking his first overseas trip as the presumptive GOP nominee although officially, he is making the trip as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Elizabeth Holmes of the Wall Street Journal notes the following:
| "John knows a lot of the leaders of our allied countries both in Europe and the Middle East very well," says Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-independent who has been a staunch McCain backer. "They respect him. They trust him. And, believe it or not, they even like him," says the lawmaker, who is joining the trip. Sen. McCain is adamant that he will keep the focus on national security and won't talk politics but "understands the charge" that some people will still see this as a campaign trip. He points to his regular trips overseas, including seven other visits to Iraq, as proof that this is only more of the same. Even so, this will be Sen. McCain's first trip as a general-election contender and will likely be received differently by world leaders and U.S. allies. When word of the trip first leaked out last week after Sen. McCain received the necessary number of delegates, a reporter asked him whether he should take time away from his domestic campaign agenda. "We got eight months," he said. "I think you probably have time to catch up on issues that are important." Among the most important: areas of conflict. Upon returning, Sen. McCain says he will give a national-security speech, something he says he has done in the past but then added with a chuckle, "Obviously this one would hopefully be paid more attention to." |
We all know that Ann Coulter has written and spoken some pretty controversial things over the years. Most of them we enjoyed, some not so enjoyable. Dr. Mike Adams is one of the first conservative columnists to call Ann Coulter out due to recent events.
There are several reasons for this. Her suggestion that we invade Muslim countries and force their leaders to convert to Christianity as well as her use of the terms "rag head" and "faggot" at CPACs have had the effect of bringing more negative attention to the Conservative Movement. But her support for Sen. Clinton's Presidential bid is the straw that broke the camel's back for Dr. Adams.
From his most recent column:
| It should go without saying that Roe v. Wade will never be over-turned if those three things happen. Even a one-term Clinton presidency will give her at least two picks for the USSC. And we can all expect picks with the ideology of a Laurence Tribe (or maybe an Alan Dershowitz) coming from President Rodham Clinton. On the other hand, a President McCain may well pick judges who think like Chief Justice John Roberts. And that would provide at least some hope that Roe could be over-turned. When it appeared that Rudy Giuliani was the front runner for the Republican nomination Ann said she could never support him for president because he is pro-choice. But Giuliani is a pro-choice Republican who opposes partial-birth abortion. Clinton is a pro-choice Democrat who supports partial-birth abortion. Why does the same litmus test not apply? |
It's still out there. The McCain Derangement Syndrome. And I don't mean from leftist Dems. The MDS is coming from the right, mostly from Conservatives who failed to rally behind more right-leaning candidates or were conspicuously absent from the polls on Super Tuesday.
But more rational voices are starting to come through. One of those voices is Kevin McCullough whose most recent column looks at the evangelical "leaders" and why their positions on staying home on election day are untenable.
From his column:
| Many evangelicals might take their cue from these two disillusioned men [Pat Robertson and James Dobson] and conclude that not voting, sitting this one out, or refusing to lift a finger in the general election is an acceptable response to a primary season that has yielded us the poorest choice for President in my lifetime, with perhaps the exception of the nomination of Bob Dole. Many might conclude that in seeing two candidates such as McCain and Obama, who have both stood for the outright violation of the Constitution, that the nomination process is flawed and therefore wiping one's hands clean of it is a decision of conscience that could demonstrate a turning over of this process to God's judgment. |
| But they would be wrong. And if Robertson or Dobson are encouraging such (and I'm not making the case that they are), then they should be rejected outright. |
| Oh sure there may not be as much to be excited about in this year's contest, but large issues do loom in the near future. If we as evangelicals remain silent as justices are seated on the Supreme Court, as our nation responds to jihadists who wish to injure. maim, and kill innocent people, or while our school curriculums begin to add homosexuality, bestiality, and every kind of sexual combination imaginable and refer to it as a family to the textbooks of our nation's school children we must understand that we play a part in allowing these things to happen. |
Despite Sen. McCain's opposition to waterboarding as an interrogation technique, he voted against a bill that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh techniques and is now calling on President Bush to veto the measure.
From the Associated Press via GOPUSA:
| McCain voted against the bill, which would restrict the CIA to using only the 19 interrogation techniques listed in the Army field manual. His vote was controversial because the manual prohibits waterboarding -- a simulated drowning technique that McCain also opposes -- yet McCain doesn't want the CIA bound by the manual and its prohibitions. |
